An Alaskan journalist's perspective on local and national issues

Posts tagged ‘Abuse’

Boy, it’s almost getting hard to take this stuff seriously, isn’t it? I mean, how can this possibly be real? What kind of cop in his right mind would shoot a naked college student? Here’s the story –

In south Alabama, a college student, named Gil Collar, was doing as college students are want to do, and was running around naked. Hopefully this wasn’t the result of a stupid Frat pledge or some other dumb thing. However, this student found his away to a police station. He was banging on the doors there, and an officer came out. According to the officer, when he came out, the kid adopted a fighting stance. The officer claims to have repeatedly tried to back off and “diffuse the situation,” but the kid just kept coming. It was then that the officer’s next course of action was to draw his gun and kill the kid. Yeah…this explanation is as bogus as it sounds.

First, let’s look at the facts. This is a 130lb college student. He is butt-naked, and has no weapons on him. He is banging on a police station window at 1 in the morning. He supposedly took a fighting stance when a cop comes out after he was banging on a window. This officer, who probably not only had a gun on him, but probably had a taser, or a baton, or some mace, and also his fists (which come equipped with hours upon hours of hand-to-hand combat training), shot and killed this kid. Seeing the problems?

How could this officer have felt that his life was in danger? This is a well-trained cop going up against a naked kid. That is not only ridiculous, it is down-right silly. And as you can imagine, this story that is filled with plot-holes has not been well-received by the community. They think that it is just as bogus as this particular blogger.

There is no way, unless this was some idiot rookie who didn’t know that all that training can actually be used for something, this story makes no sense. And of course, the “horrible” punishment for an officer who appears to have killed someone for no good reason is that he has been put on paid leave while they investigate. These cases almost universally favor the cops, so you can bet that the officer won’t be punished in any significant way. In fact, he is probably going to walk away unscathed, as police almost always do.

We have talked about this before, but it bears repeating – something needs to be done about the cops! Are are giving thugs uniforms, badges, guns, and almost complete legal immunity. These are a class of people who have no fear of the hammer coming down on them. That has to go! We need oversight on these guys!

Every week, it seems, we are hearing stories about the police killing people’s pets, like in Missouri, where the cops killed the family dog, pepper-sprayed the puppies, and were going to kill the puppies, all during what was supposed to be a marijuana bust (and they only found a bag, which was enough for a misdemeanor charge). And the murdering of pets is nothing new. There is a blog where it is documented when police kill a family’s animals.

There are a lot of states in this country where people are getting in trouble for filming the police. That’s interesting. Why would the police not want to be filmed? Could it be because they don’t want their thuggish tactics and their blatant abuse of power getting out.

A warning to all cops – you are now being watched. You are now in the public eye. You are not safe. The internet knows who you are, and the internet does not forgive and forget. The internet will still be here tomorrow. The public is wise to your game, and we are going to fight back.

It is very true, you know. The people of this country seem to have totally forgotten that having unlimited power and virtually no oversight is a guaranteed way to breed corruption. But why does that matter? What effect does it have on the world right now? Well, to answer that question, one has to look at the police forces of America. In this post, several stories of police corruption are going to show this very contention.

The first story is from New York City. The story goes that a black man named Jatik Reed. He was stopped by cops, claiming that they saw him smoking marijuana, and had a bag that supposedly had Crack residue inside of it. The police then claim that he threw a punch at them, so they proceeded to brutally assault him. Of course, video footage was released showing that this was an unprovoked attack.

All over the country, the police are filmed doing stuff like this, but one interesting reaction was during the case in Florida. Police surrounded the parked car of Raymond Herisse. They fire at his car with abandon, killing him and wounding several bystanders. One witness describes that the police were shooting until their guns were empty. With a half-dozen cops shooting the standard-issue Glock pistol that police are issued, that is a potential of 90 rounds going into the car of a man who is parked and from all evidence, never shot back or opened fire. It was a revenge-killing.

The reason that this story is important is because one man filmed the cops with his phone. When the police saw this, they went over and took the phone from him, smashing it on the ground. Luckily, the footage survived of the police murdering this man because this man who filmed them was quick enough to hide the SIM card in his mouth, even as the cops assaulted him and took his camera.

All over this country, stories come up of the police arresting people and even sometimes charging them with crimes for filming them breaking the laws that they are trying to protect. It is a right that is guaranteed that the average citizen can film the police, as a measure of ensuring justice, but the bigger question is – what is it that they want to hide?

Perhaps it is stories like one that happened in Fulton, Missouri. The SWAT police there raided a house, looking for drugs, and decided that they would shoot the family dog. When it got off of its chain, the police shot the dog six times with their pistols, and twice with shotguns. But the story doesn’t end there. The police went over to the puppies of this dog, who were in a cage. They pepper-sprayed the puppies, and the were even about to shoot them. Of course, they only found enough marijuana in this man’s house to get him a misdemeanor charge. Pepper-spraying puppies, for a misdemeanor.

That’s another thing – murdering a family’s pet is nothing new. There is an entire blog that shows the instances where the police have murdered a family dog. But what would have happened had the cops who pepper-sprayed the puppies gotten filmed? What would have been their punishment? Well, in all likelihood, nothing. They wouldn’t have gotten punished at all.

It can’t be denied that there is little to no fire that the police in this country’s feet are being held to. It is every week that a story comes out of some cop who arrests a girl for “abusing 911” when her dad was having a seisure, or brutally assaulting somebody on the street, or pepper-spraying puppies. These cops do these things, and little to nothing happens to them. In fact, the legal system of this country is complicit in this abuse of power

For those who deny that, here is another story. In the city of Philadelphia, there was a police officer named Michael Paige. He forced a man, named James Harris, to give him oral sex in his police cruiser. When charges were pressed against him, the judge came to the decision that Harris was lying, and that this was consensual sex that he was claiming was sexual assault. This cop forces a man to perform oral sex, and he has no punishment whatsoever. The legal system is absolutely in favor of this abuse.

Finally, a story from all over the country. Police are seizing people’s assets, not even charging them with anything. They pick targets who are poor enough so that they can be reasonably sure that this person will not fight back against them. They take their stuff and auction it off to make money.

America has created a culture where we are giving badges and guns to people, requring very little training for them. They are given nearly-infinite authority over other people, and are now being affirmed that the hammer of justice will not come down on them when they do something wrong. Why do people think that such a position wouldn’t attract some total and complete deranged lunatics? Why do they think that there wouldn’t be a large number of people in that profession who are sociopaths, looking to exercise their authority over others?

Absolute power corrupts. This is something history has taught us. And yet, we are not hearing anything from the public. When one comes onto a website and says something, or video footage is released, what is the reaction? For the most part, blind compliance. People simply choose not to listen to it, or claim, “it’s just a few bad apples.”

The problem goes deeper than that, and until we get some oversight on the cops, and hold their feet to the fire, this kind of rampant abuse will continue, and Officer Paige will force more men to blow him. More puppies will get pepper-sprayed. And more people will get beaten on the side of the road for no reason.

Of course, they will do that, with the parents of all the children saying, “the police officer is your friend.”